Standard deviations

As is usually the case with posted images, clicking on it will show it larger on another screen.

I know I said the Dow could go to 10,500 or higher and I was staying away from the market and not going to be going short anytime soon, but I can't help looking and observed something interesting tonight. Computers are pretty good at plotting trend lines and standard deviations, so an innocent bystander like me can press a couple buttons and make uninformed observations. Using linear regression one can plot trend lines through a lot of data. Something like 68% of the data points will fall within one standard deviation of the trend line. Something like 95% of the data points will fall within 2 standard deviations of the trend line. So, I plotted a trend line going back to the high on the Dow in late '07. The image I've attached only goes back 9 mo, to show better definition, but the trend line does have a longer history. Anyway the rally we've been "enjoying" has moved the market from the bottom of a two standard deviation channel to the top of a two deviation channel, and for the last couple of weeks the Dow has been bumping against the long term, downward sloping top.

A 1.5 standard deviation channel better fits the data for the rally we've been in since March. The Dow is currently grinding against the bottom of this channel. So which will it be? Breaking below the rally channel to stay in the long range downtrend or breaking above the long term trend to sustain the rally channel. Can't do both and it's time to make up it's mind.

I'm still just watching, but I'm getting edgy.

PS The S&P chart looks about the same.

On C-Span this morning

a guest was an economist I think named Peter Marici, from (I think) the University of Maryland. He seemed very direct, and down to earth. Seemed to blame politicians more than bankers and businessmen for mishandling the economy. He seemed more sympathetic towards Bernanke and the Fed Reserve Bank than toward Geithner and Summers in the administration. I object to his weak critique of the bankers as merely short-sighted and making honest mistakes, as compared to politicians who are irresponsible and concerned only with the next election. He, fails for one thing, to observe that the "short sighted" bankers and businessmen engaged in intense and expensive lobbying and bribed the congressmen through their election campaign contributions to change the laws to enable the bankers to make "short-sighted mistakes". I grew more suspicious of his folksiness as he continued.

One thing he alluded to that was news to me that there is a plan developing to have the Federal Government guarantee state issued debts. I have't thought through the implications, but they're huge.

As we have done in the past, now that the weather is nice,

I've begun walking Mally the two blocks from his home to Armando's Grocery. He's surprised that is seems much easier walk now (his legs must be twice as long as they used to be). We like to look over the produce department and pick out fruit that look good, sometimes exotic things we're not really able to identify or even classify, sometimes special requests: Crystal says Owen likes avocados. We talk about stuff on the way there and back pretty much as equals, though at intersections he puts his hand in mine and allows me to guide him. Like about the music store that used to be next to the grocery store where he would stop in and abandon himself to dance to Latin rhythms, and how the pretty girl there was always happy to see him. After reminiscing for a moment he said that was one of his two saddest memories, second to falling down and skinning his knee. After another pause he remarked that actually that had occurred several times. I told him I thought that the music store should be a happy memory. He said sad because it's not there anymore.

But in the store, he's in charge. A bell pepper for Mommy, watermelon for Daddy, a peach for Poppo, an orange for him. I proposed a carton of chocolate ice cream, which sounded good to him till we got to the freezer and he decided he'd prefer the twelve pack of ice cream sandwiches. We argued a bit, but he answered all my objections. Luckily, he agreed to a compromise, and we got six. He'd been more insistent when buying yogurt for Mommy. I thought one thick and creamy strawberry would be nice. He said she'd prefer the six pack of smaller containers which looked to me like they had the Trix rabbit or some similar cartoon on them. I questioned him but he wouldn't be dissuaded . When we got home, it turned out that he was right.

I wouldn't say he's at an awkward stage, but he's growing out of his toddler cuteness and hopes to be taken seriously. When I was one among nine, I was happy just to be noticed from time to time. i think his way is a greater challenge.

Just found this wisdom on Facebook

Dave DeBaeremaeker at 9:38am June 23
remember what they say: hard work pays off tomorrow, but procrastination pays off right now

Figures dont lie, but liars can figure

Kim questioned my assumption that Ahmadinejad was accurately reported to have won election last week in Iran by a 2 to 1 majority. I still believe that to be the case, but here's intelligence officer type analysis from the Washington times that suggests the numbers were cooked.

The Devil Is in the Digits

By Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco
Saturday, June 20, 2009; 12:02 AM

Since the declaration of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's landslide victory in Iran's presidential election, accusations of fraud have swelled. Against expectations from pollsters and pundits alike, Ahmadinejad did surprisingly well in urban areas, including Tehran -- where he is thought to be highly unpopular -- and even Tabriz, the capital city of opposition candidate Mir Hussein Mousavi's native East Azarbaijan province.
Others have pointed to the surprisingly poor performance of Mehdi Karroubi, another reform candidate, and particularly in his home province of Lorestan, where conservative candidates fared poorly in 2005, but where Ahmadinejad allegedly captured 71 percent of the vote. Eyebrows have been raised further by the relative consistency in Ahmadinejad's vote share across Iran's provinces, in spite of wide provincial variation in past elections.
These pieces of the story point in the direction of fraud, to be sure. They have led experts to speculate that the election results released by Iran's Ministry of the Interior had been altered behind closed doors. But we don't have to rely on suggestive evidence alone. We can use statistics more systematically to show that this is likely what happened. Here's how.

We'll concentrate on vote counts -- the number of votes received by different candidates in different provinces -- and in particular the last and second-to-last digits of these numbers. For example, if a candidate received 14,579 votes in a province (Mr. Karroubi's actual vote count in Isfahan), we'll focus on digits 7 and 9.
This may seem strange, because these digits usually don't change who wins. In fact, last digits in a fair election don't tell us anything about the candidates, the make-up of the electorate or the context of the election. They are random noise in the sense that a fair vote count is as likely to end in 1 as it is to end in 2, 3, 4, or any other numeral. But that's exactly why they can serve as a litmus test for election fraud. For example, an election in which a majority of provincial vote counts ended in 5 would surely raise red flags.
Why would fraudulent numbers look any different? The reason is that humans are bad at making up numbers. Cognitive psychologists have found that study participants in lab experiments asked to write sequences of random digits will tend to select some digits more frequently than others.
So what can we make of Iran's election results? We used the results released by the Ministry of the Interior and published on the web site of Press TV, a news channel funded by Iran's government. The ministry provided data for 29 provinces, and we examined the number of votes each of the four main candidates -- Ahmadinejad, Mousavi, Karroubi and Mohsen Rezai -- is reported to have received in each of the provinces -- a total of 116 numbers.
The numbers look suspicious. We find too many 7s and not enough 5s in the last digit. We expect each digit (0, 1, 2, and so on) to appear at the end of 10 percent of the vote counts. But in Iran's provincial results, the digit 7 appears 17 percent of the time, and only 4 percent of the results end in the number 5. Two such departures from the average -- a spike of 17 percent or more in one digit and a drop to 4 percent or less in another -- are extremely unlikely. Fewer than four in a hundred non-fraudulent elections would produce such numbers.
As a point of comparison, we can analyze the state-by-state vote counts for John McCain and Barack Obama in last year's U.S. presidential election. The frequencies of last digits in these election returns never rise above 14 percent or fall below 6 percent, a pattern we would expect to see in seventy out of a hundred fair elections.
But that's not all. Psychologists have also found that humans have trouble generating non-adjacent digits (such as 64 or 17, as opposed to 23) as frequently as one would expect in a sequence of random numbers. To check for deviations of this type, we examined the pairs of last and second-to-last digits in Iran's vote counts. On average, if the results had not been manipulated, 70 percent of these pairs should consist of distinct, non-adjacent digits.
Not so in the data from Iran: Only 62 percent of the pairs contain non-adjacent digits. This may not sound so different from 70 percent, but the probability that a fair election would produce a difference this large is less than 4.2 percent. And while our first test -- variation in last-digit frequencies -- suggests that Rezai's vote counts are the most irregular, the lack of non-adjacent digits is most striking in the results reported for Ahmadinejad.
Each of these two tests provides strong evidence that the numbers released by Iran's Ministry of the Interior were manipulated. But taken together, they leave very little room for reasonable doubt. The probability that a fair election would produce both too few non-adjacent digits and the suspicious deviations in last-digit frequencies described earlier is less than .005. In other words, a bet that the numbers are clean is a one in two-hundred long shot.
Bernd Beber and Alexandra Scacco, Ph.D. candidates in political science at Columbia University, will be assistant professors in New York University's Wilf Family Department of Politics this fall.

this Iran election thing

appears to me to be another country mouse vs city cousin thing. While we all find it easier to identify with the city mice who supported the candidate receiving 1/3 of the vote (which was very much in line with pre-election polling), the country mice comprise a majority of the electorate and voted for Ahmadenijad, in the words of the little ones who Art Linkletter used to ask why they loved their mothers on his daily TV show, "because she buys me things." Fact is the rural poor need to have things bought for them, but the educated urbanites feel the country's revenues could be better spent supporting a growth economy that would offer them better employment.

Question is whether the Supreme Leader and the Council of Experts have a vested interest in maintaining the rural poor in their difficult plight in order to preserve a power base of conservative Shiites. I guess it's reasonable to assume that the conservative clerics do wish to maintain and reward the folks who support their "traditional values" message, and they are probably wary of the educated city folks.

The critical factor is the women, who are, under the law, second-class citizens, but who have aspirations of professional and political equality. Again, these educated hopeful women are city mice. It is not likely the other candidate Mousavi has rock star status among the women since in an earlier term as Prime Minister he was very comfortable accomodating the clerics and was not noticably a reformer. It seems that it was Mousavi's wife, a former university chancellor, who sparked the women's hopes of a better future with outspoken campaign speeches. The appearance of a candidates spouse at campaign events in itself was a departure from the norm, and her speaking forcefully at the events gave educated Iranian women hope for change.

I don't think, however that the demonstrators really believe the election was stolen. They're angry that their candidate lost, but acting out in the streets because your candidate lost an election 2 to 1 does not fit into a valid model for a democracy. I think Obama realizes that, and has not been able to call for the rejection of a legitimately elected president. I'm sure he hopes, as do we all, that Islam will somehow grow out of the anachronistic tendency to diminish women's rights and opportunities, but he knows an assault on the imans would be counterproductive.

He wishes to maintain any possible opportunities for constructive dialogue with Iran regarding assistance they can provide in Afghanistan and the possibility of curtailing the Iranian nuclear programs. Since it is the Israelis who hope Obama's recent overtures to Islam will fail to produce beneficial results, and resentful Republicans who are calling on him to reject the results of the election and repudiate Ahmadenijad, I can only hope his cautious balancing act works out in the best interest of all concerned.

Nobody said it was going to be easy.

Beautiful day

Wasn't it? Janett couldn't sleep last night and I got her up on the wrong side of the bed this morning. She showed resolve and a helpful spirit, coming down to the office to insure Jose and I didn't mess up setting up the payroll for a new client on Quickbooks.
We were invited to a 2PM birthday party for co-worker Evelyn's five I mean six year old daughter Lanie at Randall Oaks, a park I drive by often but seldom stop. Around 1, while we were still working, Louie called and said he was at Randall Oaks for the KofC picnic. Wow! Small world. Good for me - bad for Janett who'd begun thinking in terms of a a courtesy visit to Lanie's party and a quick return home for much needed rest.
I began scaling back my plans, finally to a 15 minute stay with each group, but Janett grew resistant to the idea of going at all. Perhaps she didn't trust me to conform to a scaled down plan. So, I went alone, which happens not uncommonly, when I've exhausted Janett. But the park was nice and I enjoyed seeing Louie and his young adult children, can't really call them kids anymore. Well, I guess we can. The birthday party was wonderful. Lanie was radiant and Evelyn vital and vivacious as ever, engaging fiercely in the water balloon melee. The food was excellent. The poor KofC'ers didn't know what they were missing. Evelyn offered to prepare Janett a plate, but salad, beans, rice, beefsteak with onions and peppers and falling-off-the-bone chicken in red sauce did not promise to travel well on a paper picnic plate, so I compromised with a piece of birthday cake and a couple of slices of watermelon. I think Janett was pleased with the selection and said the cake was particularly good which I didn't know because I'd eaten too much of the main course to try to confront desert.
Janett's retired now (at 8:30PM). Kim just called to say she, Steffy, and the boys were returning from church and could swing by for a visit. Janett groggily declined-but that's OK. We'll see them and accept best Father's Day wishes tomorrow at Jason and Dee's where we'll celebrate Joey's birthday. my life is a mad social whirl.

Did you hear about the two Japanese guys

arrested by Italian police at the Swiss border trying to smuggle $134 billon dollars in US Treasury bonds into Switzerland in a false bottom suitcase? It hasn't been a big news item. Why not? Here's a link to the original story in Asia News, but there has not been a lot of coverage in the week since the original report.
If these bonds were in a denomination of $1000 there would have been 135 million of them. That would have been some humongous suitcase. But no, these bonds were in denominations of $500 million and even a billion dollars each. Since darned few investors have a billion dollars to invest at any given moment, these bonds were presumably printed to faciltate transactions between governments or central banks.
Italian authorities says they're investigating to determine whether the bonds are counterfeit. There have been rumors of the North Korean government investing in high tech counterfeiting enterprises. Maybe, but I don't think so. I mean if you were in a position to buy a billion dollar bond, you're probably smart enough to validate their authenticity. Of course, sometimes counterfeit bonds have been used to post as collateral for a big loan, and maybe scrutiny was less strenuous than in the event of a sale. But at this kind of value I doubt procedures would be lax.
So the fun part of the story is the the speculation about whose bonds they are. First guess would be the Japanese (or some other Asian government) treasury trying to to dump dollars in Switzerland through channels that would be untraceable. If there was more coverage of the story, maybe clever conspiracy theorists could come up with scenarios even more intriguing. The government dumping theory, though, is interesting enough in its implications.

Homesick? Get your home town news here!

(Unless you come from N Dakota or Wyoming.) Julie sent this link. No comments please on superimposing the red and blue map.

I'm going to work, Heres something for you.

My vituperations against Geithner, Bernancke and the Goldman Sachs crowd are not intended obscure the fact that other causes lie at the root of the economic meltdown. This article addresses the macroeconomics. In order to entice you to read it, I will not condense or summarize it.

I hope everyone is having a nice day.

You know I support Obama, but wonder why he's

relying on the same old crowd at Treasury and the Fed.
Here's an article fron the New York Times today.

The Economy Is Still at the Brink

By SANDY B. LEWIS and WILLIAM D. COHAN
Published: June 7, 2009
WHETHER at a fund-raising dinner for wealthy supporters in Beverly Hills, or at an Air Force base in Nevada, or at Charlie Rose’s table in New York City, President Obama is conducting an all-out campaign to try to make us feel a whole lot better about the economy as quickly as possible. “It’s safe to say we have stepped back from the brink, that there is some calm that didn’t exist before,” he told donors at the Beverly Hilton Hotel late last month.

Mr. Obama thinks that the way to revive the economy is to restore confidence in it. If the mood is right, the capital will flow. But this belief is dangerously misguided. We are sympathetic to the extraordinary challenge the president faces, but if we’ve learned anything at all two years into the worst financial crisis of our lifetimes, it is that a capital-markets system this dependent on public confidence is a shockingly inadequate foundation upon which to rest our economy.

We have both spent large chunks of our lives working on Wall Street, absorbing its ethic and mores. We’re concerned that nothing has really been fixed. We’re doubly concerned that people appear to feel the worst of the storm is over — and in this, they are aided and abetted by a hugely popular and charismatic president and by the fact that the Dow has increased by 35 percent or so since Mr. Obama started to lay out his economic plans in March. But wishing for improvement and managing by the Dow’s swings are a fool’s game. (Disclosure: One of us, Mr. Lewis, was convicted on federal charges of stock manipulation in 1989, pardoned by President Bill Clinton in 2001 and had his lifetime trading ban overturned by the Securities and Exchange Commission in 2006; documents relating to the case can be found at sblewis.net.)

The storm is not over, not by a long shot. Huge structural flaws remain in the architecture of our financial system, and many of the fixes that the Obama administration has proposed will do little to address them and may make them worse. At another fund-raising event, for Senator Harry Reid, President Obama said: “We didn’t ask for the challenges that we face. But we are determined to answer the call to meet those challenges, to cast aside the old arguments and overcome the stubborn divisions and move forward as one people and one nation .... It will take time but I promise you, I promise you, I’ll always tell you the truth about the challenges we face.”

Keeping that statement in mind — as well as an abiding faith in the importance of properly functioning capital markets — we have come up with a set of questions meant to challenge a popular president, with vast majorities in Congress, to find the flaws in the system, to figure out what’s being done to fix them and to get to the truth about the difficulties we face as we set out to restore the proper functioning of our markets and our standing in the world.

I can't wait for the TV movie

See article

Not So Fun

In my March 11th post on Phillip Purcell I questioned Mr Pandit's veracity.
I'm not the only one. This is from a Bloomberg news article.

Bank Profits From Accounting Rules Masking Looming Loan Losses
By Yalman Onaran
June 5 (Bloomberg) -- Big banks in the U.S. say they’re on the mend. The five largest were profitable in the first quarter, rebounding from record losses for the industry in the fourth quarter. Share prices have jumped, with the KBW Bank Index doubling since March 6.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, after “stress testing” 19 banks on their ability to withstand a worsening economy, declared in early May that Americans can be confident in the banks’ stability and resilience. Wells Fargo & Co. and Morgan Stanley were among banks raising $43 billion in new capital since then through share sales.
“With our capital and assets, stressed as they have been, we can go back to focusing all our attention on managing our business and restoring value,” Citigroup Inc. Chief Executive Officer Vikram Pandit said after Geithner’s examinations were completed.
The revival may be short-lived. Analysts who have examined the quarterly profits and government tests say that accounting rule changes and rosy assumptions are making the institutions look healthier than they are.
The government probably wants to win time for the banks, keeping them alive as they struggle to earn their way out of the mess, says economist Joseph Stiglitz of Columbia University in New York. The danger is that weak banks will remain reluctant to lend, hobbling President Barack Obama’s efforts to pull the economy out of recession.
‘Bogus’ Profit
Citigroup’s $1.6 billion in first-quarter profit would vanish if accounting were more stringent, says Martin Weiss of Weiss Research Inc. in Jupiter, Florida. “The big banks’ profits were totally bogus,” says Weiss, whose 38-year-old firm rates financial companies. “The new accounting rules, the stress tests: They’re all part of a major effort to put lipstick on the pig."

This is just part of a good article. It's linked above if you want more.

Also, it's part of my "sour grapes" rationale for losing money on my last 4 options trades. If the banks aren't lending the money what are they doing with it. I think they must be giving it to investment companies to run the market up to show some profits for the quarter. Once Mr Smith decides it's safe to go back into the market and recoup some losses, they'll be happy to sell to him at inflated prices.

Jimmy Rogers, commodity trader extrordinaire says for nearly the first time in his trading career, he's not short any stocks, because this newly printed "money" being pushed into the market could run the market up to 15 or 20 thousand on the Dow Jones Industrial Average. He's not sure, but he can't take the chance on shorting. So he's buying commodity futures, on the hunch the same inflationary pressures raising the Dow will affect commodities, but the demand for commodities won't dry up overnight the way the buyers in the stock market will when the time comes.

I'm not sure the market will rise over 10,500. I mean, have people completely forgotten about price earning multiples and balance sheets? But my put buying is temporarily suspended.

Fun

We went to Owen's first B-Day party yesterday, and everything was delightful. After a gray chill morning the sun came out big time and it was very comfortable in Steffy and Mark's yard. The party had a pirate theme, so there was buccaneer paraphernalia everywhere, and folks with pseudo-pirate garb, and a lot of "Aargh, maties" We got there a little early so Janett could help with the prep. Owen heard my voice in the other room after being put down for a nap and decided he's rather be carried around than sleep, so by the end of the day he was cashed but happy. Malachy was more attuned to the party's motif, and enjoyed it, although, when he didn't win the "Pin the Patch on the Pirate Game" he said that it was a bad party and he was leaving. He went to the kitchen table to color, but was coaxed back to the yard a little later. Stephy made cupcakes for the children and with the leftover batter made a small cake so owen could be helped to blow out a candle. He then mangled the little cake, and had to leave the party for a brief clean up.






And here's Mally getting all romantic:

Rough Sailing Ahead

"The Worst Is Yet to Come": If You're Not Petrified, You're Not Paying Attention
Posted May 15, 2009 09:31am EDT by Aaron Task in Investing, Recession, Banking, Autos, Housing

Related: ^DJI, ^GSPC, DDR, XLF, GM, RWR

The green shoots story took a bit of hit this week between data on April retail sales, weekly jobless claims and foreclosures. But the whole concept of the economy finding its footing was "preposterous" to begin with, says Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates. "We're in a complete mess and the consumer is smart enough to know it," says Davidowitz, whose firm does consulting for the retail industry. "If the consumer isn't petrified, he or she is a damn fool."

Davidowitz, who is nothing if not opinionated (and colorful), paints a very grim picture: "The worst is yet to come with consumers and banks," he says. "This country is going into a 10-year decline. Living standards will never be the same."

This outlook is based on the following main points:

With the unemployment rate rising into double digits - and that's not counting the millions of "underemployed" Americans - consumers are hitting the breaks, which is having a huge impact, given consumer spending accounts for about 70% of economic activity.

Rising unemployment and the $8 trillion negative wealth effect of housing mean more Americans will default on not just mortgages but student loans and auto loans and credit card debt.

More consumer loan defaults will hit banks, which are also threatened by what Davidowitz calls a "depression" in commercial real estate, noting the recent bankruptcy of General Growth Properties and distressed sales by Developers Diversified and other REITs.

As for all the hullabaloo about the stress tests, he says they were a sham and part of a "con game to get private money to finance these institutions because [Treasury] can't get more money from Congress. It's the ‘greater fool' theory."

"We're now in Barack Obama's world where money goes into the most inefficient parts of the economy and we're bailing everyone out," says Daviowitz, who opposes bailouts for financials and automakers alike. "The bailout money is in the sewer and gone."

Still in posting purgatory.

But enough about me let's talk about you for awhile.

Jason is now 37, and working more hours than a lot of electrical subs right now.

Dee's indispensable role with her employer seems to be providing job security. She threw Jase a very nice party last Sunday.

Val may decide to take the summer off to be with the kids and go back to work in the fall.

John is pleased his company is spending on equipment at the site he manages. That makes one feel a little more secure.

Nate and Angie were in town for Sue's dad's funeral while J and I were in GA, so we didn't get an update from them. Hope all is well. We're sorry for the loss.

Ross is interviewing, but took off for a couple weeks off to visit family in NC

Kimmy is where she's happiest - with Ross, and the trip may pay a big dividend in the form of Ross's Mom's old Yukon which runs a lot better than that KIA or whatever parked in the drive in Lombard.

Steffy is worn and torn, stressed and fatigued by the two little boys, and wants to have a little girl. (?) Busy right now preparing for Owen's 1st Bday party.

Mark's survived a couple cuts at the church and is working a lot of hours, and is a very good daddy.

Noah's been posting to Facebook and even his blog, which shows how sociable he can be when not doubled down with work and school.

And Lauren, Well, heh, heh, Lauren has some big news to share, in it's own good time.
wink wink nudge nudge.

Jeff Samardzija got sent back to Iowa by the Cubs just before they went on their recent skid: and let that be a lesson to them.

Love to all.

Spirit

I also appreciated Tim's quoting CS Lewis, something like, You don't have a soul, you are a soul. You have a body."

My soul didn't get the lift I was seeking at Willow yesterday. Nancy Beech spoke about the value of friendship, and the diminunition of our sense of friendship is this digital age. All very good, but not what I was looking for yesterday. Still, maybe she was saying what I needed to hear, in the sense that what might be lacking for me is a Christian fellowship with whom to interact and grow, from whom to receive encouragement and criticism. That's the thing about going to church, what you're looking for isn't always what you need.

Julie emailed me this link which yielded these pictures. Touching story.

I googled the punch line from the the joke on Tim's

Facebook page, "With all this horse shit, there must be a pony in here somewhere."
This was the funnest link I found, a pagan 12 stepper.

ALCOHOLICS ANONYMOUS AND THE NEO-PAGAN

by: "the Bard"

GODDESS: Grant me the SERENITY to accept the things I cannot change,
the COURAGE to change the things I can,
and the WISDOM to know the difference.....!

-the Serenity Prayer

*

Aw, f**k it!
-Serenity Prayer (short form)

*

(DISCLAIMER: the opinions in this article are my own, and should not, and
must not, be taken as necessarily the opinions of AA as a whole. AA does
NOT endorse ANY specific religious belief. To quote the standard definition:
"AA is not allied with any sect, denomination, politics, organization or
institution; does not wish to engage in any controversy, neither endorses or
opposes any causes. Our primary purpose is to stay sober and help other
alcoholics to achieve sobriety." GOT THAT?)

*

JUSTIFICATION 101

Taoists say, "Shit happens."

Buddhists say, "If shit happens, it's not really shit."

Zen says, "What is the sound of shit happening?"

Hindus say, "This shit happened before."

Muslims say, "If shit happens, Allah wills it."

Protestants say, "If shit happens, let it happen to someone else."

Catholics say, "If shit happens, you deserve it."

Fundies say, "If shit happens, the Devil did it!"

Jews say, "Why does shit always happen to us?"

Baha'is say, "If shit happens, it's a Spiritual Experience!"

Wiccans say, "There's gotta be a pony in here someplace!"

*

Alcoholics don't take lovers...they take hostages.

*

"Hi! My name's "the Bard," and I'm a grateful alcoholic and Recovering
Anglican."

(Hi, Bard!)

Now, for those lucky ones of you that are reading this who are -not-
drunks.....maybe none of this applies to you, tho you could perhaps learn
something from it. Just bear in mind that if you haven't "been there," then
you don't truly understand what it's like. Try to bear with us; we're not
finished yet...
*

Probably the best way to start is to talk about the Twelve Steps of
AA....and comment on them from a Pagan point of view. Being Pagan doesn't
make us any better that anyone else, but it does affect our view of the
Universe. Being alcoholics, however, we will tend to do what every other
alky does, and start logic-chopping and complicating even the simplest things
into utterly unrecognizable impossibilties...and when we do -that- we can
say to ourselves, "It's too hard for me. I can't do that."

Keep it SIMPLE, stupid!

A question to think about: To properly work magick, you must be in
full possession of your faculties. You think you can work magick -drunk-?
HAH! That's kinda like giving an armed nuke to a three-year old child.....
Maybe it'll work out OK, and then again.......odds are pretty good that you'll
get a BIG hole in the ground REAL soon!

Another question to think about: do you wonder, sometimes, if you
maybe -are- an alcoholic? Well, ole hoss, if you gotta wonder about it, then
you probably are.......alcoholism is a DISEASE. It is -not- an immoral defect
in you. It is NOT a "failing." It is simply a disease, and there is NO cure.

There is, however, a way to recover from it. Read on!

*

STEP ONE: We admitted that we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives
had become unmanageable.

This one is pretty obvious, and doesn't need a lot of comment. It
applies the same to the Fundie as it does to the Pagan. If you
just can't handle alcohol, you just can't handle it. Period.

STEP TWO: Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore
us to sanity.

What is the Goddess/God -but- a "power" greater than ourselves?
There IS a "Higher Power." Call it what you will. Call it God,
call it Goddess, call it Ralph, if you wanna, but it IS there,
and surrendering your EGO to it is necessary for it to work.
Brad Hicks said that "Nothing so chokes Magick as EGO," and he
was right!

STEP THREE: Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care
of God, as we understood Him.

Now, PAY ATTENTION! It says "as we understood.." Yeah, it says
"God" and "Him." So what? This was written to reach out to people.
Ya want it to say "Goddess" and "Her?" FINE! Say it that way to
yourself. I know a guy that said "Ralph" and "It." Worked fine!
-Don't- get hung up in semantics. You got an agenda, take it
somewhere else. You bring it into AA, and you'll stay drunk.

I notice that fella in the third row right is having problems with
the semantics here...he's associating "God" (or "Higher Power")
with that Big Fella with the Long White Beard that sits up in the
Great White Throne of Judgement and writes down everything bad you
do so He can punish you for it. I thought we had thrown out that
concept of the Punishing God! We ain't talking Fundie here, boy!

By "ego" I do not mean your free will. This you have. This you will
always have. I mean surrendering that part of you that sits in the
corner and screams defiance at an uncaring world. The "child-self,"
if you will. "Child" is selfish, uncaring, and manipulative. These
are things we need to recover -from-. "Child" will manipulate by many
techniques, one of which being "people pleasing." (We need to recover
from -that-, too.)

Besides, if you are a practicing alky, your "will" consists mainly of
finding a way to get drunk. Pbflth! That ain't "will." That's an
addiction.

STEP FOUR: Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.

OOPS! Here's a hard one! That icky buzzword "moral!" I hear a
LOT from Wiccans about the differences between "morals" and
"ethics." Frankly, if the actions/attitudes are harmful, then they
can be called immoral/unethical. "An ye harm NONE, do what ye will."
If your actions hurt someone, YOU need to realize it, and admit it.
See the next step. Logic-chopping at this point will only get you
into trouble. If you wanna read "ethics" for "morals," go right
ahead....just be honest with yourself. As a practicing alky, you've
lied to yourself long enough.

STEP FIVE: Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the
exact nature of our wrongs.

So tell the Goddess (or Ralph) your problems with dealing with
life, liberty and the pursuit of tapioca pudding. Tell it to
yourself, too. GET A SPONSOR and talk to them about it. Pretty
simple, really.

STEP SIX: Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of
character.

Talk to your sponsor about this one. The Goddess (or Ralph) will
do it, if you can get out from behind your own EGO long enough to
let it happen....

STEP SEVEN: Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.

Notice it says..."humbly." Contrary to the belief of -every-
single alky I've ever known, we are NOT the Center Of The
Universe.

As amazing as it may sound, the Goddess runs the Multi-verse quite
well on Her own. -You- can't even handle alcohol on your own, so
what makes you think you can run the Multi-verse?

STEP EIGHT: Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to
make amends to them all.

Yeah, I know, Karma has taken care of it. But that's on the level
of the whole Multi-verse. Make your list. This helps you to admit
to yourself (see the steps above) just where you were being a jerk.
Notice also it says "...became willing..." This does not mean "made
amends." It means you are WILLING, sincerely willing, to make those
amends. Karma has already stomped on you, if you think about it, but
for your own growth you MUST cop to this.

STEP NINE: Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when
to do so would injure them or others.

This is pretty obvious, don't you think? You got questions about
this, ask your sponsor.

STEP TEN: Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong
promptly admitted it.

"I thought I had made a misteak once, but I was wrong."

(Good epitaph for anyone who died drunk! You die drunk, you stay
drunk next time around, until you get the message...you wanna do
that, go right ahead. Call me when you become teachable.)

It's always pretty hard to admit to making a mistake...Wiccans and
other neo-Pagans are no different than anyone else about that one.

STEP ELEVEN: Sought thru prayer and meditation to improve our conscious
contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for
knowledge of His Will for us and the power to carry that out.

No problem here for Pagans, is there? I mean after all, isn't
this exactly what we're trying to do in the first place? You
ain't gonna do diddely-squat with magick without the Higher
Power, anyway.....and this step is a doggone good lesson in
what real magick -really- is all about. Think about it for a
while.

It is your Will that wants you to get sober. It is your EGO that
keeps you drinking, along with the physical "allergy." Take that
EGO, that spoiled child-self, and turn it over to the Goddess. Or
Ralph.

STEP TWELVE: Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps,
we tried to carry this message to alcoholics and to practice
these principles in all our affairs.

So whattya think I'm -doing- here ?

*

Just for funsies, let's look at those steps in -reverse-......

***************************************************************

THE 12 STEPS IN REVERSE

SUCCESSFUL RULES FOR THE SELF-DESTRUCTION OF THE ALCOHOLIC

1. I stated that I could handle liquor and/or drugs, and I was master
of my fate.

2. Firmly believed that I was entirely rational and sane in every
respect.

3. Made a decision to run my own life and be successful in all my
undertakings.

4. Made a searching and thorough inventory of my fellow man and found
him wanting.

5. Admitted to no one, including God and myself, that there was
anything wrong with me.

6. Sought through alcohol and/or drugs to overcome my responsibilities
and escape the realities of life.

7. Got drunk/stoned to remove these shortcomings.

8. Made a list of all persons who had harmed me, whether imaginary or
real, and swore to get even.

9. Got even whenever possible, except when to do so would injure me.

10. Continued to find fault with the world and with the people in it,
and when I was right, promptly admitted it.

11. Sought through conniving and hypocrisy to improve myself
materially at the expense of my fellow man as I misunderstood him,
asking only for the means to get and stay drunk or stoned and escape
from reality.

12. After having a complete moral, physical and financial breakdown, I
tried to drag those who were dear to me down to my level, and to
practice these reasonings in all my affairs.

*******************************************************************

Well?

It may be that you are still a practicing alcoholic. You are still
drinking and drugging and making everyone around you miserable. I won't
preach to you. If that's what you want to do, then that's fine with me.
That's -your- problem, not mine. I am dealing with -me-, today, not with
you.

When you hit bottom, whatever that may be to you, whether it is
winding up in the drunk tank, or squatting in a corner with DT's, or
being thrown thru the roof of a car at 65 MPH (and surviving it), or having
blackouts, or losing everything you have, or, Goddess forbid, killing some
one else with your car.....and the Goddess FINALLY gets your attention,
then remember that AA is out there, and CAN help you.

Call your local Central Office, and get the location, date and
time of a meeting near you. If you need a ride to it, they'll be glad to
help out. Get a copy of the Big Book, and read it.

Go to meetings. Read the Big Book. You don't even have to -say-
anything in meetings. Just sit there and listen for a while, if that's
what you feel you need to do.....but GO TO THE DAMN MEETINGS!

This is being published, initially, over BBSes. Your local BBS,
if it is FIDONET, may carry the RECOVERY echo. It is available on the
backbone, and can be brought in by your local SysOp. Ask for it. Read it.
It's for -you-.

*

Blessed Be!
Sober, one day at a time:

-the Bard
Yule, 1990 CE

MMDW

Memorial Day week-end. I just spoke with Jose. His wife has plans for him today so we're not opening the office again till Tuesday AM. Sweet.

I was looking at the article I posted yesterday. I selected it for the interesting chart of the HUI. an index of 25 mining stocks. I previously glanced over the author's reference to a previous article. I'll try to find that article and maybe post it. Right now I'm just considering the author's illustrative factoids that the entire population of the world could fit standing up in the city of Detroit, in townhouses in the state of Texas (4 persons per townhouse), or in Australia with 4 persons sharing each acre. I'm going for the Australia option, and putting in dibs now on beachfront in Sidney.

This idea is unintentionally tangential to the concept or redistribution of resources. Suppose you could oversee a pooling of all the wealth in the world, including personal assets such as automobiles, apparel, and furnishings, and all financial assets including cash on hand and in accounts as well as real estate holdings, stocks and other equity interests and bonds or other receivables, (net of debt) and then redistribute the wealth ratably to each and all the persons in the world. -Obviously, you'd have to safeguard with tax legislation against the table being tilted to allow the wealth to flow back into the hands of the clever few within a generation. Also, I know some of us suspect there would be those who would idly dissipate their gratuitous wealth (me, for instance). We'd have to pass a law against that as well.

But my question is how much wealth per person; parent, grandparent, child, whoever would you exempt from the initial confiscation?

I intended this to be purely a philosophical enquiry, but in case you're interested here are some world-wide statistics. This study done for 2000 shows that 2% of adults own over 50% of the world's wealth. I'm confident the imbalance is even more profound now.

Gold - again

My post yesterday got me to thinking, so I went to Financial Sense (see links) which I don't think I've visited 3 times in the last year. Sure enough, gold is warming up.

All Eyes Are On Huey!
by Peter Degraaf | May 12, 2009


The HUI index is poised to break out above 350. The importance of this breakout is evident in the following chart.

Featured is the daily HUI index of gold and silver stocks.

In the event of a breakout at the green arrow (which now appears to be underway), the result will be a very strong ‘up-move’ as all that pent-up demand below 350 becomes unstuck.

The pattern is an inverted ‘head and shoulders’ formation with the neckline at 350.

The RSI and MACD are positive (green lines).
Assuming the breakout succeeds - the target is 550!

On the fundamental side, we have a US government deficit that is clearly out of control.
In the words of William Black, associate professor of Economics at the University of Missouri: “We have ‘failed bankers’ giving advice to ’failed regulators’ on how to deal with ‘failed assets’”.

The US Budget Office estimates the 2009 budget deficit at 1.8 trillion dollars or four times the 2008 record deficit. We’re talking ‘monetary inflation in spades’! While it can be said that it takes time for monetary inflation to turn into price inflation, you can be sure that more and more investors are going to anticipate whopping price inflation.

Such price inflation will result in increased demand for gold and silver, and the stock of companies that produce gold and silver.

Even at 1.8 trillion dollars, the US Budget Office is making certain assumptions regarding tax receipts.

It is the ‘nature of the beast’ that during a recession, not only do tax receipts decline, but the demands on government on the part of unemployed persons increase dramatically.

Think of the letter “Y”, with the tops of the Y rising steadily. One side is less revenue and the other side is increased demands. ‘Never the twain shall meet.’

In my last article I lamented the fact that Mr. Obama made it a priority to sign legislation that exports abortion to foreign countries at American taxpayer expense.

I pointed this out to show that the President is not a compassionate individual. After all he chose death over life! He has voted for abortions right up to the 9th month after conception. Abortion is the scourge of a society. It eliminates the very people who will be needed to support the aging population. Honestly now do you really wish that your mother had decided to abort you?

Historically, when the birthrate falls below 2.5 children per couple, that society is slowly doomed to extinction, except for immigration!

The current US rate is about 2.1 children per couple, with some sources claiming a rate even lower than that. The reason 2.1 children per couple is not sufficient is because a certain number of children die before marriage, and others never marry. Therefore the number soon drops below the magic ‘2’.

As an aside, the Muslim clergymen understand this principle and they encourage a high birth rate, while forbidding abortions.

I received a lot of E-mails as a result of my observation. Most of them agreed with my position, but a few did not. Among the people who disagreed, were some who are worried that we are becoming overpopulated.

It is for these people that I present the following facts:
All of the human beings alive today can stand up in the city of Detroit!
All of the human beings alive today, grouped into fours can have a townhouse in Texas!
All of the human beings alive today, grouped by four can have a home with an acre of land in Australia!

Some of you are worried we will run out of resources.

In the mid 19th century, people were worried that the world was running out of whale oil. Then in 1858 someone in Oil Springs Ontario Canada, dug the first commercial oil well, to be followed a year later by the oil discovery at Titusville, PA.

The world is not likely to ever run out of resources. Even crude oil, which is today being used up 5 times faster than new discoveries are made, is actually a constantly renewing resource. No doubt we will have to switch from one resource to another, but that is what makes life exciting, and it creates opportunities for entrepreneurs.

Copyright © 2009 Peter Degraaf
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